At this point, I'm feeling a bit "sobered" by the realization of what I learned. Over the years, I've seen several pictures of autopsies, prison knife victims & ER knife cases that brings home the brutal reality of being on the wrong side of the blade. This was one of the reasons for my interest in pursuing knife skills.

However, being the "feeder" & causing the amount of carnage I've seen is another matter altogether. Firearms training is important but killing/maiming someone @ 10-20 feet is a lot different than doing so skin-to-skin. I suspect that if you shoot someone, their body fluids & pieces will be blown away from you while in a knife encounter, their arterial blood, any blood propelled by an exhale (from mouth or throat) and/or intestines that spill out will be on you.

Although everybody @ the seminar had a good time, I can't help but think that there may have been some that went through the drills as if they were playing 3 Musketeers.

That's why I'm in a bit of a funk this morning. The only thing I can tell myself is, "better them than me (or my loved ones)". I hope that I never have to cut anyone.

Just a quick question. What kind of disarms did they do? I am curious because while I have no experience in blade arts or actually using a blade. There are some arts I have seen that the disarms as shown really scare me. At a seminar I attended the technique was to pin the arm and then grab the blade of the knife and pry it out of the opponents hand. Seems like you could cut your own fingers doing that better then the opponent could. IMO. I am not looking for a specific technique breakdown more as to what their philosophy and objectives are in a disarm. Thanks

We didn't devote much time to disarms but the ones we did used the blade of the knife against the feeder's (attacker's) knife. In reality, a knife will be zipping @ you & through you so fast, a disarm is virtually impossible (& they acknowledged this).

They just demonstrated & had us practice for the sake of learning the mechanics.

All those fancy trciks for disarming is just to make you feel cool. Stopping a knife is very difficult. Every thursday evening we would fight with wooden knives. Rarely anyone would come out without getting "cut". Next day you would see the bruises from the stabbing some of them seem you could survive some of them you would have been taken out in a coffin. The SE martial arts are aware of this and normally their teaching involves to seriously injure the holder of the knife before trying to take it away. But practice does help.

Just hosted a Sayoc seminar this past weekend in Somerset, New Jersey. Excellent instruction and content. We are starting a training group in New Jersey and plan on hosting 3-4 seminars a year. If any one would like to be included on an email list for notification please email me at nick@allstartkd.com. 3 of 9 and TD1 was a great introduction to the art.

Wanna have some fun in Maryland? Look up The Kick Connection. Carlos Pantlihug (OK I just destroyed his last name) is the instructor. He is a Master of Doce Pares and a relative to the founder of the system - as well as a 5th Dan in ITF Taekwon-Do. I have trained with Carlos a couple of times and have also trained in Doce Pares for a year. Carlos is a great instructor and excellent martial artist. If he is still around look him up. Outside of that i am having my Sayoc instructor (Guru Steve) out here in March and again in September of '08 and I will keep you notified